North Carolina Graduation Project

Andrew Beal

The REAL Cult of Vesta

In Ancient Rome, there were hundreds of gods and goddesses, and some groups of people felt that some of those deities were more important than others, so they started or joined cults to give that god or goddess special recognition. The actual Cult of Vesta was a group of women who were selected at a very young age to serve the goddess Vesta for 30 years as virgins. These women were viewed highly and were given special privileges, they were the only women in Rome allowed to hold their own money.

In the mockumentary, the women in the cult, or Vestals were not selected but volunteered themselves to join the cult, they also made acceptions about the virginity requirement. One of the main jobs that the Vestals were tasked with was keeping the fire of Rome burning, if the fire went out, it was believed that Rome would fall, in my mockumentary, the club doesn't have enough funds to have an actual fire so they use a fan with paper taped to it. I wanted the mockumentary to have elements of both documentaries and mockumentaries; the filming style is highly stylized to resemble a documentary, and parts of the script were improvised similarly to how most mockumentaries are made.

The Script

Part of the mockumentary process is improvisation. While in other forms of media, the script is to be strictly followed, in mockumentaries it acts as more of a guideline that actors can improvise off of and elaborate on.